A mobile software expert and a banking provider have teamed up to push mobile NFC for banking. ABnote and Sicap have announced that they are setting themselves up as an “aggregator” for any bank, retailer or mass transit provider that wants to create an NFC system. If this paragraph hasn’t made any sense to you so far, then don’t worry! All will be explained.
NFC:
Near Field Communications (NFC) refers to wireless technologies that work over very short distances – usually about 10cm or so. Most of you reading this will have used NFC before, or even have it in your wallet. If your office has a card reader that doesn’t require swiping, but simply holding your smartcard near the reader, then you’ve used NFC.
The applications of NFC with both mobile devices and commercial payments are potentially huge. You can anchor an NFC chip to your banking or credit account, for example, and use it to pay for goods and services. Or you can store your monthly train pass on the chip, and use your phone to swipe through the turnstile at the station. The mass transit use of NFC looks particularly promising, with many companies around the world running succesful NFC trials.
So who are ABnote and Sicap?
ABnote Group is a global company that’s huge in the field of secure data management. A big part of that is plastic card manufacturing – in particular plastic cards that can hold data. ABnote already has connections with over 50 banks around the world, making smartcards and data cards. Sicap, on the other hand, is a mobile software company with its fingers in a lot of different pies. In this instance, the Sicap service we’re interested in is its experience with mobile payments and charging… and its contacts with over 80 operators.
What do they mean by “NFC aggregator”?
The thing about Sicap and ABnote is that they have a vast amount of contacts. Look at the number of banks and mobile operators they work with around the world. So the idea would seem to be this – if you are involved in banking, retail or transit and you want to deploy an NFC payment option for your customers, then Sicap and ABnote want to be your one stop shop. By aggregating a global network of financial institutions and mobile operators, along with the wireless and NFC experience of both companies, they should be able to provide a complete NFC package for anyone in the world who wants it.
What we think?
While this does look like a great service, it does have it’s drawbacks. A big problem with NFC is that while it’s very cool, it does need mass market adoption in order to work. If a consumer can only use their NFC mobile in a few locations around a city, they’re eventually just going to forget they have it at all. And while the Sicap and ABnote partnership will be great for NFC enabling individual organisations on a one-by-one basis, I’m not sure it has the power to drive mass adoption. It will probably take the joint efforts of several mobile operators to make public adoption a reality – and services like this one can certainly help raise the profile of NFC among the operators.
